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Suiting up, Evie crossed the Lightbridge and watched her feet hover over eternity. Ahead, her crew were waiting on the Artisan. She thought of the moment when she’d punch in the numbers and kill the bridge forever. No one would be able to reconnect it, no one could summon it again.

She looked out and saw the black pulse of the stars beyond the barrier of the bridge, light engulfed in darkness engulfed in light. Endless. Like hurt.

Had he made a grave of his life, or carved away a piece of immortality, all in their name? Was this the only thing left to him that felt like peace?

She climbed into the Artisan’s airlock, and waited for the decontamination to end. Stopping at the first terminal she found, she started to enter the signal. It felt wrong to linger, to dwell. There was no ceremony, but she paused before sending. She gave him a moment, a wish for his sanctuary to outshine his sorrow, then sealed off the star.

The monochromatic display flickered, and she saw the black lines of the interior structure fade. Like scars, that vanished with time.

Evie watched until it was all white, then turned and walked away.

Barry Charman is a writer living in North London. He has been published in various magazines, including Ambit, Firewords Quarterly, Mothership Zeta and Popshot. He has had poems published online and in print, most recently in Bewildering Stories and The Linnet’s Wings.

He has a blog at http://barrycharman.blogspot.co.uk

Goddess with a Human Heart

Jeannette Ng

Art: Sara Julia

The speaker outside my window splutters to life. Between the static and the distorted, mechanical voice it is impossible to make out the time being announced.

But I know. I have three hours left.

My hand creeps unconsciously to my chest and rests on my beating, fluttering heart. Caged in bones and bound in flesh, it longs for something more. It has a fate apart from me. It aches.

I turn on my bunk to face the window and its cramped view of the street outside. I can see the edge of the ziggurat from here. It is early and the lights are beginning to spark. It is pretty, in a way.

I remember the first time I saw the Goddess in the temple. My legs and feet had been sore from climbing the great ziggurat. I had huddled at the top of steps, frowning at my shiny child shoes, their heels stained with machine oil. My doll of knotted rags was tucked under my arm. I chewed my braid as people streamed past me. I heard my mother call.

I had looked up and all those petty, pretty things fell away.

The Goddess who Listens to the Suffering of the World.

She was arranged cross-legged among and upon the endless tangle of wires and tubes and pipes that fed Her. They are Her thousand hands and thousand eyes. Above Her, shrouded in a thick haze of machine smoke, were the thick coils of Her thinking, blinking databanks. In days of old, She was depicted with a spread of arms behind her back, like the spokes of a great wheel. Each arm would end in a hand with an eye at the palm. Each would hold something different: a sword, a book, a fan, a branch, a reminder of all she could do. But now, we know Her true form.

I felt Her eyes on me and was suddenly aware of my own inconsequence as a child: all plump cheeks, stubby limbs and cute sharpened teeth.

I looked for Her face; it was under a crown of spiralling glass cables that feathered the light into a dizzying array of colour, obscuring most of her features. I could just about make out half-closed, sunken eyes and high, sharp cheekbones and the shadow of lips. Her cheeks were stained red with machine oil from her crown of cables. I imagined she looked upon us with infinite, ineffable wisdom.

Her real, mortal arms had long been severed and had been arranged like the petals of a lotus around Her torso. One of her hands held a tiny light that cast a red glow onto the papery, preserved skin of her arms. Her robes seemed to whisper gently with Her every breath. One of the folds had shifted from Her shoulder and I could see the rows of glinting medical staples down her left breast.

Three hours. Or rather, a little less now.

I am older now, but part of me will always remain that awe-struck little girl. It is that little girl’s heart that the Goddess needs in Her. The priests have counted the days and it is time. We owe it to Her. And we need Her.

I curl into myself. The priests will be here for me soon. My eyes fall on the pale green robe that hangs in wait for me. I shudder; clutch the sheets closer to myself. My stomach clenches and the urge to hurl pulses at the back of my throat. I try to breathe.

Again and again, my mind returns to the stories of the past, of how the gods and goddesses walked among us. Always at the end of the tale, the deities would cast off the mortal skins they wore and revealed themselves to their followers.

Ages rise and fall. Each age begins with blood and ends with blood, for that is how the days are measured. The people are transformed and a new sun rises from the ashes.

The bright sun of the fifth age, Left-Handed Hummingbird, was slain by his sister the moon, She whose Face is Painted with Bells. She led the stars in a war against him and we nourished our sun with sacrifices of blood and bone. We called ourselves the People of the Sun. For a while, it seemed enough.

Until, of course, one day, when it wasn’t. Our brave, proud warrior sun was poisoned by his treacherous sister. It darkened and cooled and we gave up more and more of ourselves to feed him. The war of the heavens continued, and as Left-Handed Hummingbird dimmed, we knew it was the end of the fifth age and we knew our deaths to be written. It is the way of the world, that each age end in blood and fire.

That was when the Goddess appeared.

From beyond the darkness, She found us. She heard our suffering. She was the reflection that hid in the obsidian mirror of our pantheon. She snaked from its ink-black surface like smoke and promised us life. She saved us from the darkness and became our new sun.

We built our new world around Her, though we gave it an old name: Aztlán. Enthroned in Her temple atop the greatest ziggurat ever built by mortal hands, She sits at the heart of our metropolis. She hears our suffering, shapes our world and illuminates our darkness. Her databanks arrange and organise every aspect of our great metropolis, from the times of the cloudrail to every suncoil that shines on every waterfield.

I swallow, though my mouth is still dry and my stomach unsettled. I try not to think of all the things I will leave unfinished in my room. Scrap-rag serials I will never know the endings of. That scrap of knitting I will never finish. The milk that will expire after I breathe my last. I should be finishing things, not turning over and over in my bunk. I want to pace, but there isn’t the space in my cramped room.

The heart that beats in me is not my own. It belongs to the Goddess and it has always belonged to Her. I am not a sacrifice; I am merely a vessel for Her heart, a mortal skin that She needs to shed.

I imagine the obsidian scalpel against my breast, and my stomach knots. This mortal skin has felt too much already. We are meant to surrender Her heart to Her when it is still unburdened by such feelings.

Perhaps I am already too old for this.

It has been said that as the days are counted, the human heart within the Goddess hardens to the sounds of our suffering. With each beat, it turns Her away from us. Humans, after all, are not made for boundless mercy. We are small, petty creatures, finite in our loves and likes.

And so she needs a new heart every three years. Before they break.

In the last count of days and years, heretics have disrupted the transplanting of the Goddess’ heart. The blessed hour passed and the black scalpel did not fall. Last time, I sat in this room wide-eyed and full of hope. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, feet dangling impatiently as I waited for Father Itztli. I was fearless, then, and I knew only love. I wanted only to surrender to the Goddess what was Hers by right.

It has since been three long years.

With shaking hands, I undress. I resist the urge to study the dark, gangly shape in my mirror as I reach for the robe. Vanity will do me no good now. The synthetic is crisp against my skin. The back ties are awkward, but I manage. There is no need to be neat. I bind my old running shoes to my feet. I try not to think of how this will be the last time I wear them.

The yellow streetlights flicker and I glance out. Hunched figures in white and red shuffle down the street. I watch the steel door slide open and the three shapes disappear through. I can smell the pungent mix of incense and machine oil before I can hear their footsteps.

They are here.

The door gives a beep before it opens. Father Itztli steps in, followed by two other priests. They smile at me, bowing their heads gravely and gesturing me peace.

“Are you ready, little one?” says Itztli. He is beautiful, as all priests are. His hair falls in a mass of turquoise and garnet augments.

I bite my tongue. Desire coils and uncoils around the heart that isn’t mine. Irrationally, I want to hear my name from his lips, but I know he cannot bring himself to say it.

“Are you ready?” he repeats.

“As ready as the sun is to set at dusk.” My voice sounds hollow and the ritualised words devoid of meaning. I remember the hours I have spent meditating upon them, for they would be my last. It is strange to speak of these things in terms of ancient celestial phenomena. “Thank you, Itztli.”